How to Add Value by Using a Real Estate Photographer
“You have two seconds to grab the buyer’s attention without a photo, and 20 seconds with a photo.”
- marketleader.com, "Back Away From the iPhone and Hire a Photographer"
All too often we look at properties on the market that are being marketed online using only a handful of photos - often taken on a phone, too dark, and too zoomed-in.
Having photos - good photos - gives a huge boost to the potential success of a listing. It grabs peoples’ attention, makes each property look great, and ultimately brings in more competition, meaning a higher commission in the long run for you, the agent.
How does it achieve this? Let’s dive in:
recap Time: what IS marketing?
Wiktionary defines it as “The promotion, distribution and selling of a product or service”.
In general, your goal is to make a property look as presentable as possible in order to maximise its’ value, which ultimately maximises the vendor’s sale price and the marketer’s commission.
Typically this will include your photography, floor plans, online listings, printed materials and signboards, as well as the in-person chats, open homes, and so on.
The goal of all of the above is to build awareness of the property, with a view to getting people to see the home and drive competition, which will in turn potentially raise the sale price.
Whats the single most important tool in this for showing people the property before they see it in person? Bingo.
With this in mind, let’s look at how having ‘basic’ photos of a property can affect the marketing.
Buyers spend 60% of their time looking at listing photos, and only 20% each on the listing description and agent description
- The Wall Street Journal
what do ‘DIY’ photos achieve?
In short, they represent a missed opportunity!
DIY real estate photos, whether on an iPhone or on a DSLR, will simply show the property ‘as-is’.
Shooting without professional equipment will often make the images appear darker, more distorted, and more cropped.
Why? Because photographers are able to light and compose each shot to compensate for dark areas, perspective distortion, and are able to use wide-angled lenses to include more of an area.
Take a look at these shots below:
The top two were shot on an iPhone 7+, with some editing for brightness. The bottom two shots were taken on a DSLR with lighting equipment and a wide-angle lens. See the difference in quality?
The DSLR images are crisper, brighter, have more accurate colours, show more of the room, and are generally more inviting. The iPhone images certainly show the space, but they’re not nearly as inviting.
So, what do DIY photos achieve? They document the place, and that’s about it. What they fall short of doing is making the property more presentable by combining lighting, composition and editing to make it look the best that it possibly can.
You wouldn’t draw the floor plan yourself, so why do the photos?
“Homes with professional photos get 61% more views.”
Redfin, "Look Sharp: Professional Listing Photos Sell For More Money"
so, How does professional photography add value for the agent and vendor?
It’s eye-catching. It stands out amongst the other properties in brochures, and it attracts people to click on the online listing.
Good professional photography complements and enhances a property, and aims to make the home look the best that it can.
The goal of real estate photography is not to just show the rooms; it’s to present the ‘vibe’ of a room using a perfect blend of equipment & techniques - lighting, framing, focal length and composition.
By maximising the interest and number of views that a home has, and ultimately bringing more potential buyers into the scene, the photos help to draw in more competition.
Competition is at the heart of every market, and will almost always yield the vendor (and agent) with a higher sale price..
“Professional photography can help sell your listing 39% closer to the original listing price.”
Is it worth it then?
Yes!
In most cases, hiring a photographer is one of the most crucial aspects of marketing the property, and provides a huge increase to the value of the home.
The increase in value more than covers the upfront cost of hiring most photographers, so this really seems like a no-brainer. The only question left is which photographer should you go with?